Slip into my thoughts and do watch your step

Daily Archives: November 9, 2013

What was spinning on the YouTube Wurlitzer as you wrote last night, Cassie? That’s an easy one: Quadrophenia and Who’s Next, both by The Who. Who’s on First? Yes.

As you may have guessed by the bad Dutch that passes for a title today, my characters are on their way out of Amsterdam and on their way to America. They’re not quite there, yet, but by sometime this morning they’ll be airborne for sure. You can bank on it, ’cause when I left them last night, the 747 was on the taxiway heading to their runway, and the last thing asked was, “What are you thinking?”

All the grand players for this part of the story are on stage: four students, four instructors, and one Headmistress to Rule Them All. Well, not exactly: she’s not that sort of person, but she doesn’t put up with any merde, either. They’ve all had their say, they’re getting into position, and there’ll be a couple of more scenes on the plane before I move into the last act of this Chapter and Part, and move into the good stuff, which brings the main character on stage:

The School.

Until then, I have my people arranged as you can see to the right. I decided last night that when writing these sub-scenes, as they are, within a main scene, I’ll just throw in the names of the people who are actually in the scene, along with a meta title letting me know who is there and what is probably happening. I finished two scenes last night, and made it part way into a third before I called it quits, because . . . well, for one it was a good stopping point, and two, I felt exhaustion creeping up on me, and my back was hurting more than a little by that time. I’d hit my total for the evening, so why push it? Kick back, watch a little of the Battlestar Galactica pilot until I can’t couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, then head off to bed.

The last couple of days have been good writing days. I’ve not pushed myself on my writing, and yet I’m making close to, or over, two thousand words a day. As mentioned, that’s a lot of late: my normal totals are a thousand a day when I’m not NaNoing. My writing is taking up a good portion of my night, because I’m going slower: I’m trying to get the correct words and feeling, and by six PM, when I normally begin working on my novel, I’m at the point where I’ve been up for over thirteen hours, I’ve written my blog post and pulled of full eight to eight and a half hours of work, and spent twenty minutes, each way, walking to work. It’s a long day, and two thousand words make it an even longer one.

What remains today is to try and finish out these next few scenes, close the chapter and part, and move on. It’s planes, trains, and automotive vehicles from here out out, and then I introduce Isis, Coraline, Trevor–and some devious person who just loves to play mind games with the students. And I mean that.

What Has Gone Before

Check the Past by Date

It’s been a while since I’ve spoken with you. Perhaps speak isn’t the correct way to put things, but it works for me. In a way, I am speaking to you: I’m dictating this with Dragon software. It seems in the past couple of days Dragon has learned my idiosyncrasies far better than before, and […]